Life In 79

After selling our Airbnb, Anna, my wife, was worried about having nothing to do with her time and becoming bored. I suggested the novel idea of getting a job, at which she laughed. I said a couple of days at the local abattoir would get her out of the house, enable her to practise her French, meet new friends as well as bringing in a few pennies, and maybe some offcuts. But she wasn't interested. What about gardening? The great outdoors, exercise, good for your mental health (as Monty Don keeps banging on about), etc. I love gardening and have always wanted to get Anna interested. To feel the earth between your fingers, to taste your own home-grown produce and to smell your home-made nettle liquid manure, maturing in the shed. But she says it's not her 'thing'. She loves being outside, appreciating the garden, but from her sun-lounger with a pina colada to hand.  We would be like Jean de Florette and his good lady wife, Mrs Florette (the opera singer), I told her. Tilli...

I'm not sorry to bid a fond farewell to February...my least favourite month. Unlike Anna, my wife, I don't suffer from Seasonal affective disorder (SAD); she goes into decline in September and emerges from her torpor around May/June. If I say to her the days are getting shorter, a little muscle above her eye starts twitching. February, the month when: our honey solidifies in its jar and the olive oil turns grainy because the kitchen is so cold ('boo'); all my geraniums that I thought might last the winter don't ('boo'); the Six Nations Rugby is on the telly ('hurrah' from me, 'boo' from Anna). One thing I'll say in February's favour...it's short ('hurrah'). With the incessant rain our garden turns into a quagmire; it's like walking on a giant lasagne, slipping and sliding about. Outside our front door it resembles the Somme and when hanging out the washing one is prone to trench foot. As well as the interminable rain t...

Whilst doing mundane jobs around the compound (uprooting brambles, re-grouting swimming pool slabs, stacking five stere of logs) my mind drifts away and I reflect on some of the highs and lows of life in the UK. Sometimes I will start laughing like a loon when I remember some of the more embarrassing incidents from my murky Thespian past. The local amateur dramatic society were holding auditions for their upcoming production of the King and I and my mum had informed us (me, my twin brother and sister) we were going to audition for one of the King's 106 children. None of us wanted to audition but our mum, who was a forceful woman, was adamant. Our audition prep was lacklustre to non existent. If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands was our chosen song, as we thought the choreography would take care of itself. On the big day we had barely sung Clap You Hands before we descended into uncontrollable giggles of embarrassment. The more we tried to hold it together the worse i...

It was at her parents' diamond wedding anniversary in Scotland that Anna, my wife, contracted the horrible illness. I was all for a quarantine period on her return, but she said she wasn't prepared to live in the barn for two weeks...selfish. It started in the chest giving her a hacking cough, then went on a tour of Anna's body spending some time up her nose...causing it to run constantly, her limbs...making them ache, then back to her chest en route to her sinuses and jaw where her teeth kept throbbing and her eye sockets pulsated. It wasn't Covid as she did three tests (albeit out of date)...all negative. A 24 hour bug this was not, it lasted the best part of four weeks and she still isn't completely her normal, bubbly self. I was like the lady of the lamp popping Strepsils out of their foil pockets, filling hot water bottles, mopping her sweaty brow and trying to keep her buoyant with comforting words and singing to her in her darkest hours. I suggested we call...

We have a house guest. A dog. Which is staying with us for ten days. As I write, we have her for another three days, seven hours and 34 minutes. We like dogs, we had a dog, we loved that dog, on the whole, but she left us after 14 years and now resides on Rainbow Bridge. Ever since, we have been thinking about getting another, but the commitment; being dragged down the road for the early morning walk in the lashing rain, scrubbing fox poo off her neck having rolled in a pile, picking up her turds in a plastic bag, coaxing her out of the under-stair cupboard after bonfire night. But we loved that dog and when we took her, for the final time, to the vets in Airvault we wept like school girls. It's been four years since she went...we found her passport in a drawer the other day and remembered the happy times. She was a Labrador and would hurl herself into any puddle of stagnant water she could find; she even dragged my dad into the canal one time...happy memories. But I think with dog...

For some reason Mr Ryan Air has decided that flights landing at Poitiers Baird should be moved to the middle of the night (with the now standard delay added on). I was going to pick up our four month old granddaughter (she wasn't travelling alone, her parents were visiting too). It was to be her first time on French soil and we were very excited. A cot had been erected, nappies from Aldi (size 3) purchased and a large Tupperware container was ready to act as a makeshift sterilizer. The first part of our airport run is cross-country and having done the route so many times it has become second nature, but driving at night was a different matter. I found myself creeping along at 60km trying to avoid all the wildlife that decided to commit hari-kiri when my car passed by; a fat ragondin just outside Gourgé hurled himself towards the front tyre (luckily my ninja driving skills kicked in and I managed to dodge the big fella), there was also what looked like a pine marten jogging alongsid...